(soft music) (soft music) (soft music continues) (soft music continues) - Welcome to another edition of InFocus, I'm Jennifer Fuller.

Statistics show more than 2000 children are born each year in the United States, classified as what we call limb different.

Many of those kids face many challenges and barriers throughout their early childhood and into their lifetime.

And one of those experiences that sometimes they miss is a traditional summer camp or a sports team.

WSIU's Benjy Jeffords reports on an organization here in Illinois that's trying to change all that.

- [Benjy] NubAbility Camp started 10 years ago and continues to grow every year.

The camp specializes in teaching limb different children how to play mainstream sports and improve their skills.

Du Quoin resident Sam Kuhnert came up with the idea his junior year of high school, after he was invited to coach at a camp for kids with limb differences and amputees.

Being limb different himself, he understood the challenges these kids had and decided to change the way they and other people saw them, including their parents.

- When I got there, I saw parents holding their kids back and not allowing them to participate in all sports, just because of fear of failure.

And you know, failure's a part of life.

We have to fail in order to learn how to succeed.

And so, when I saw these kids not given the opportunity to go out and fail it, it didn't sit well with me.

And so I got the kids away from their parents and started running them through athletic drills that I did growing up to become the best player I could be.

- [Benjy] Seeing the kids being held back weighed on Kuhnert's mind all night that first day.

And he felt this needed to change.

- I saw this raw God-given talent that was just going to waste out of this fear of failure and it wasn't sitting well.

And so that night, you know, I kind of stewed and stewed and stewed and then the next morning, this vision pops in my head and I truly say it's from the Lord above, this vision of this camp where kids with limb differences and amputees get to learn to play mainstream sports from coaches who look like them, who have played at the highest level.

So it gives them a mentor who looks like them and gives them no excuses.

- If you have two hands, use your opposite.

Opposite leg - - [Benjy] Kuhnert began searching for coaches for his camp.

- If you have one hand, just use the same one.

If none, just get your knee up, get your heel up as high as you can.

- [Benjy] He felt the best way for the kids to learn is from someone they can identify with.

- [Sam] My goal is, as the founder and executive director, is to match these coaches or match these kids with a coach who looks like them.

So, it gives them that mentor who looks like them to guide them not only through sport, but through life.

- Go down, get a nice stretch.

- [Benjy] One of those coaches is Bree McMahon from High Point, North Carolina, who's coached at every camp since 2012.

- You're gonna do the opposite, you're gonna take a wide step this way and go, oh gosh, I don't know if I can do that side, and go down.

Okay, good, there we go.

- [Benjy] McMahon says there's a reason she returns to Du Quoin every year.

- Honestly, it's the relationships I've formed with the other coaches and these kids.

They are some of the most amazing people and like, you get like the most amazing feeling being around other people who are just like you and understand like what you go through.

So it's just, it's so hard not to like want to be here 24/7.

Like I love it.

All right, and go!

Let's see it!

- [Benjy] McMahon says it's heartwarming to see the progress kids make every year when they return to camp.

- [Bree] You go and coach them, they come back and they're like doing the things that you taught them or like, you've made an impact on their life.

But these little kids don't realize how much they mean to us, as well.

So, it's just the relationships with these kids and the parents and just like having people around, like having this support system is amazing.

- [Benjy] LuAnn Ruwe from Hooper, Nebraska traveled more than nine hours to bring her grandson, Amit, to his second year of camp and is blown away with the camp and staff.

- I love it.

I love it.

The thing that I love most about is that, you know, everybody sees everybody else doing things that they possibly thought they couldn't do and they can do them now.

You know, they see that it's possible.

And everybody, the staff is just full of encouragement and you know, everybody's just a great big family.

It doesn't, they don't draw attention to your disabilities, but to what you can do.

- [Benjy] Her grandson Amit Ruwe couldn't wait to come back for a second year of camp.

The camp lets kids focus on one sport they want to improve on, but they also get to try new sports, like archery.

- You can do sports.

And I like water sports the most.

But I, water sports is not my main sport.

My main sport is swimming.

- [Benjy] LuAnn says having limb different coaches helps the campers eliminate self-doubt and come out of their shell.

- I wanna see their personality first and that's what they're doing here.

They're showing the personality and they're just showing them how they can have fun and not be this, the disability doesn't become the attention-getter.

So yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah, it's just really nice.

Everybody's excited and encouraged, from the minute we got here.

Everybody was glad to see everybody and remembered Amit, of course, 'cause he's a darling child.

Spoken like a true grandma.

- [Benjy] McMahon says the campers not only benefit from having coaches like them, but seeing other kids like them or with other differences helps them form connections with each other.

- [Coach] Wanna see those knees up.

- In my daily life I rarely see someone who is an amputee or just like me, so I can't imagine how it is to be a kid at their age in this day, to like be around all these kids and not have anybody else who's just like them.

So them coming here seeing like, "Oh, I can do that.

Oh, they do that?"

It's so, I think it is so incredibly important.

- [Benjy] Anthony Renzoni took a few days to drive his daughter Kat to camp from Holden, Massachusetts.

At five years old, she's already had to overcome many obstacles.

- We took her in at 10 months old and she's got major differences.

She's got half a leg and born that way, with half a foot, with no hip joint.

Additionally, she had no right hip on her fully functioning leg, which was corrected through surgery.

She's got 135 degrees of scoliosis that's been initially corrected.

(campers cheering) - [Benjy] Renzoni feels this camp will let Kat see she's not the only kid that has limb differences.

- The whole ride here we talked, and we talked about what this means and the opportunities and she, at five years old, you know, had the insight to talk about this on the ride home last night after dinner and was talking about everybody's differences and how these kids were overcoming their differences.

So I think, you know, besides all the fantastic sports and meeting all these people, for her, it's a good time to process and figure out exactly what she means in this world, how she's gonna operate in this world.

- Step over, swing that leg!

- [Coach] Go, go, go!

Go, Kat go!

- [Benjy] On the second day of camp, Kat had the opportunity to try some football drills.

DJ Covington has been coming to NubAbility Camp since it began and the only time he missed it was because the pandemic forced it to be canceled.

- It meant everything for, to find somebody that I was, that I looked like, 'cause nobody around me in my life that I've met looked like me, had a hand like me.

And coming up here and seeing hundreds of people with limb differences and seeing how everybody's just a big family and just bring awareness to limb differences.

- [Benjy] This year Covington is experiencing camp in a new way as a junior coach.

He says that's because of the significant impact his coaches had on him as a kid.

- Seeing how big of an impact the other coaches made on me as a kid, I just wanted to carry that on, 'cause I know how much it meant to me.

- [Benjy] Kuhnert says they've had an impact on many campers since the camp started.

- In our 10 years, we have served over 1500 limb different youth from 49 states and 11 countries.

And all 49 states and 11 countries have come here to Southern Illinois, to Du Quoin Illinois for this camp.

- [Benjy] Renzoni says this won't be the last time he comes to the area.

- We're gonna be family members here.

I think we're gonna make it a point to schedule this each year.

- [Benjy] One of the reasons Kat was able to come to camp is because of the scholarships available for campers.

- Our scholarship policy at NubAbility is always the same.

It's apply and receive.

You can apply 20 times in a row.

If I don't have the funding, I'll go get it.

But it will always be fill out the application and it's granted.

It is granted within 24 to 48 hours.

- [Benjy] McMahon says she's thankful for the opportunity to coach at NubAbility Camp.

- Being here and teaching like, the smaller versions of you, it's just, I can't even explain it, like how uplifting and how like, thankful I am for every opportunity that I have to like, coach these little kids and develop these relationships with them.

Because they learn so much from us and we learn so much from them in return and you're like, "Oh, like I never thought of doing it that way."

Like, now we try doing it their way.

And so it's just like, it's undescribable.

You can't replicate this feeling anywhere else.

- [Benjy] For InFocus, I am Benjy Jeffords.

- We're back on InFocus with the executive director and founder of NubAbility Athletics Foundation, Sam Kuhnert.

Thanks for coming in.

- Thank you for having me, Jen.

- For people who are unfamiliar with your organization, can you talk a little bit about your inspiration and how it all got started?

- Yeah, so I was a three sport athlete growing up.

Like from the time I came out the womb, they said I was born with a ball in my hand.

And I just loved sports and despite any adversity I faced, I continued to know that I could do it and propel myself forward when, with the help of my family who really instilled faith in my me and my abilities, we went on to end up getting college offers and also getting a lot of reports done on the one-handed athlete in southern Illinois.

And one of those reports reached out to a camp out in Chesterfield, Missouri, called Camp No Limits.

Camp No Limits is another amazing organization.

At the time they were still in their growing period in their Missouri camp and they had, I think about 10 kids at this camp who were all limb different and they do more of a life resource camp type deal.

Like, they're teaching the kids how to do everything with their limb difference, but they wanted to include a sports perspective.

And for me growing up, I had the blessing of having a mentor who looked like me, named Shane Boyett, who was my freshman football coach.

And he was also one of my mom's TAs at one time at Du Quoin High School.

And so I had a mentor who looked like me, who I could bounce questions off of or show me how to do things.

And to give the opportunity to go out and do that for someone else was something I really wanted to do in my life.

And so whenever they reached out to me like, "Hey, we want you to come and teach our kids to play sports."

Absolutely, you know, this is what I was meant to do.

And I get to this camp and what I found were children being held back and not allowed to participate in certain sports out of fear of failure.

They were being subjected into one sport, which didn't sit right with me.

You know, in my opinion, every kid should be exposed to as many sports in their life as they can because those sports create opportunities for growth in ways that I feel like life doesn't even present.

And so when I saw this, it didn't sit right.

So I got my mom to get all these parents away from me and I got to work with these kids and I just saw this raw God-given ability going to waste out of fear of failure.

And I had this vision pop in my head the next day of a camp where these kids got to have a mentor who looks just like them, who's played at the highest level of the sports, so it gives the kids a mentor who looks like them, who shows them that there's nothing that's impossible.

And moving forward to where we are now, you know that we had our first camp in 2012, had 19 kids, seven coaches.

Fast forward to today, we've held our 50th camp since 2012.

We've served over 1700 limb different youth from 49 states and 11 countries.

We have a coaching team of over 120 accomplished athletes from all over the country and outside the country, including Brazil, Canada, and Mexico.

And so we are bringing in more mentors for these kids, so every kid gets that opportunity to have a mentor who looks like them, to push them in both sports and in life.

- It seems to me as a parent myself, that we wanna protect our kids from disappointment, we wanna protect them and shield them from the things that can be very difficult in life and kids can be difficult to each other.

So I imagine that it's probably hard at first to get parents to say, "Okay, yes, let's do something like this.

Let's get my child involved in team sports."

- Absolutely.

You know, you see parents just hesitating 'cause they don't wanna see their children go through any pain or struggles.

But the fact of the matter is, these kids are going to be competing with every kid who's like them for the rest of their life and whether it's for jobs or on the sports field.

And so, we wanna give those kids that courage and confidence that their difference is simply that, a difference.

It's nothing that can hold them back.

It's not a disability, it's something that can propel them forward because they're gonna have to work three times as hard as everyone else just to get past them on the field.

You know, they have to work twice hard to get on the field, three times as hard to pass them.

So they're putting in more work, more effort, which then causes that reward to be that much greater.

- We're seeing more and more athletes who are limb different or different in other ways, making headlines all across the country and and really globally, do you think that kids are seeing what's happening there and getting more interested in things like NubAbility?

Is NubAbility perhaps helping some of the athletes get to where they are?

- Absolutely.

You know, we actually just found out yesterday that we have sent 15 kids on to play college sports since we started.

Several of those, it was the first time they ever played that sport was at NubAbility, which is incredibly rewarding.

But you know, to me, the greater reward is the kids who both come back to the camp, to give back as coaches, which we've had over 20 of them do.

But then the kids who go on and they age out and they're like, "You know, sports aren't for me," but they go into roles such as EMT or doctors or surgeons or chiropractors, you know, areas of fields where people expect you to have all your limbs and they're crushing it, because they have the confidence to do so, that they learned at our camps and that they learned through our coaches.

And you know, for me, I had Jim Abbott growing up, the professional baseball player, so I knew that it was possible to get there and that's what I strive to do.

And now these kids are getting multiple athletes, like Kayleb Wagner out in Florida, who broke Derrick Henry's rushing record, like Shaquem Griffin, who played in the NFL for four seasons.

You know, there's athletes coming out every single day that are giving these kids more opportunities to see that they can, because they have.

- You mentioned the camp in Missouri as you were getting started, there are lots of other camps that work with what I would maybe classify as more occupational therapy.

How important is it for the kids to have this team aspect and learn to work with other people who are dealing with other things in their own lives?

- It's huge.

You know, you create a community without creating a community.

You know, at NubAbility, we've built what we call the family atmosphere.

So every single child, we will do everything we can, in our power and with our coaches, to help them in every aspect of their life, which is then creating that team atmosphere because they immediately say, "Okay, we've reached that goal from our team whenever we aged out at this, now I want to help the next team come up just like that."

So, that whole family atmosphere of everybody wanting the absolute best for each other, while also competing on the field and pushing each other to be better.

Because the fact of the matter is when these kids are out there in the world, a lot of people are going to feel sorry for them.

They're going to try and hold them back or not push them as hard out of fear that they're going to hurt the kid or not, or the kid's gonna fail.

And they need to be pushed, they need to be pushed harder.

And that's why the NubAbility mentality is we don't give you a hand to get you up.

We teach you how to pick yourself up.

- That was where I was going to get to next.

Obviously, these kids are gonna face challenges.

They may even face those challenges in the camp and have that "I don't think I can do this" feeling or that hesitation.

How does your camp help them work through that?

Or is that really just a peer-to-peer sort of thing?

- So, at NubAbility, we can build the complete athlete.

So you have stage one's physicality, right?

That's your, that's your drills, that's your sports instruction, that's everything there.

Second stage is mentality.

We don't allow the word "I can't" at camp.

They say "I can't," usually our coaches have some sort of fun punishment, whether it's run a couple miles or do some pushups, you know.

Oddly enough, kids don't say "I can't" more than once, you know.

(laughs) And then the the third thing is nutritionally.

So, we're building that complete athlete and nutrition and mentality go together, you know, almost in sequence.

And so whenever we're building that complete athlete, we're setting them up so that they can face any situation head on and accomplish any situation or anything they wish to do in their life.

- You of course have people involved in your organization who are not limb different.

Who have just decided to take this on as something that they would want to do.

Maybe they've met you or some other reason.

What types of things do you hear from them, that they have learned that maybe they didn't think about before?

- I'm gonna throw a crazy stat at you.

You know how big Du Quoin is, 6,500 people, right?

We have around 400 volunteers a day at the all sports camp.

So 400 volunteers a day, that's incredible.

That's so many people who just come out and volunteer their time for these kids.

And what we hear is that it changes their life, it changes the way they look at it.

It changes their perspective on things.

Not only that, it changes the way they looked at people like our kids before.

You know, they see our kids who don't have arms going out there and crushing it on the soccer field, or going into the weight room and strapping weights up and throwing it up like it's nothing, you know?

And that's, to us, that's the type of mentality that we want other people to have when they look at our kids.

We don't want them to look at them as the limb different athlete.

We want them to look at them as the athlete.

And that's what all of our coaches have done.

They've become that athlete who has achieved at the highest level.

- You've gone through this as well.

How do you talk with these athletes about what they might face going into a team sport at a school, college, whatever, where they will be singled out, they will be asked by people like me, "What's it like to be?"

Do you talk to them about those sorts of things and what they're going to experience?

- We do.

And you know, the one thing that I really try to assert to all of our campers and all of our families is that owning your difference doesn't happen overnight.

It's a process, you know, it's just like whenever you sign up to go to the gym, if you work out one day, you're not gonna see any results.

And the same thing with your confidence.

If you're just telling yourself, "Okay, yeah, I own my difference."

And then you go out there and somebody plugs at you and plugs at you and plugs at you, eventually you're gonna get overwhelmed and you're either gonna be upset or angry or both.

And so what we try to tell our kids is expect it, it's coming.

But that's not a disability.

That's nothing that holds you back.

That's nothing that makes you different.

You might approach this sport different than your peers, but you're still approaching the sport in the same way.

Because you still are trying to accomplish the exact same things through the sport that they are.

And you're having to work even harder than they are to achieve where you're at.

- I think of global events like the Paralympics, like the Invictus Games, those sorts of things.

Do you think those help these young people see what they can accomplish on a global scale?

Does that help that it's on TV and it's so well publicized?

- It absolutely does.

I think that there's not as much support for the Paralympics as there should be.

You know, I feel like the, if you look at the, what the Paralympians get compared to what Olympians get, you know, it's significantly different.

Now, I know that it's a much smaller market than the Olympics, because not every country has a Paralympic team, but I think that they deserve more than what they're getting.

Now, I will also say that I think that the Paralympics should be for when you're done competing in mainstream sports.

That's my personal stance.

I think that the kids should compete against everybody else to show them that they are just as capable for the rest of their life.

And then if they want to continue competition once their competitive careers are over, get into Paralympics.

- Let's talk a little bit about athletes helping athletes, because as you talk about community, athletics is its own community in many ways.

I know that you have athletes from high school and college levels coming to help with camps.

How important is that for those athletes to help out other athletes?

- I think it's very important.

You know, I think they're getting to see what other athletes go through.

And not only that, it exposes them to exactly how much adapting these kids have to do to a sport in order to just get on the field with them.

I also think it creates a no excuse mentality.

You know, we raise our kids that way.

That's how we raise our NubAbility kids through it, is this no excuse mentality.

And I think that passes on to these other athletes.

So they're like, "Well, Jimmy with no legs was out there sprinting on the baseball field because coach said no walking on the baseball field, well I better not walk on the baseball field."

You know?

And I think that's contagious and I think that that is something that more schools should push for.

I think more schools should try to push their kids to get involved in programs like ours, so that when that kid is on their team, they're not holding them back.

They're not feeling sorry for them, but they're pushing them just as hard as they're pushing their other teammates.

- I imagine awareness is as much a part of what you want to accomplish, as it is helping the individual athletes themselves.

You came up during a time when social media wasn't as big a deal.

We didn't see as many affinity groups that you could be a part of and understand that there was a larger community out there for you.

Do you use social media?

Do you use internet groups and things like that to make sure that the kids feel connected?

- We do now, you know, and honestly, NubAbility was built off social media.

It started as a Facebook page, a Facebook forum where I would post little tutorials and I, 'cause I thought that's what NubAbility was as a 17-year-old in high school.

And it wasn't until the good Lord kind of dropped me to my knees and made me basically give, he gave me a second chance at life to the point where I realized that NubAbility was supposed to be more.

And that's what it is today, you know, with all these camps that we're doing, but we're not serving as many people as we need to, Jen.

And there's still kids today in southern Illinois.

We were having a talk before this, you were telling me about a child I've never heard of.

And you know, southern Illinois's not big, you know?

And so there's kids out there who aren't learning of us and we wanna find ways to break down those walls and break down that red tape and get there so we can serve more kids.

'Cause that's my overall goal.

Serve as many of these kids as we can, with whatever breath I've got in my body.

- Well, let's get down to the basics then for who's eligible for a NubAbility camp.

Because it's not just people who are limb different in terms of missing a limb, but how can people find out how they are eligible or how they might be able to help?

- Absolutely.

Well, first thing is we're an open book.

Contact us, 618-357-1394.

That's our number.

Website's nubability.org.

We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever.

My personal phone number is out there everywhere, so feel free to contact me as well.

Every single child who has any type of difference that has limited them or has other people has seen as held them back is eligible.

So highly mobile cerebral palsy, frozen limb syndrome, missing hands, missing fingers, you know, anything that gives them, where people would think, "Yeah, they, they can't do everything as well as others."

We're gonna show them they can.

And that's what NubAbility is about, is giving these kids that opportunity to earn courage and confidence through sport.

- When the athletes come back as coaches, you mentioned that a few of them have, do you find that they maybe give a different experience to these kids because they've already gone through it?

- I will tell you that it, that has been one of the most humbling things that I've ever gotten to experience is when our coaches, or when our kids come back as coaches, to watch them pay it forward because they're able to, you know, the games evolve every single year.

So, they're giving them that common game right now where those kids are, but they're also giving them the experience as a camper and they're able to say, "Hey, I was here five years ago, I was a camper and now I'm a college athlete, or now I'm a a high school varsity athlete and I'm here to push you so that you can get there too."

To me, that's more important than myself and our other coaches when we're out there because, you know, we've been there, but it was a long time ago.

This is new, this is recent, this might be current, and you're giving that kid that mentor right there in the moment.

- Athletes tend to have, at least from my experience, that drive within them.

But they need somebody sometimes to kind of kick it into gear.

I assume that helps them.

- Absolutely.

Urgency, you know, that's the way I look at it.

Anytime a coach chewed me out, I never looked at it as criticism or hardship.

I looked at it as urgency.

And I, that's what we promote to our kids.

Urgency to get out there, go out there and compete, know you can do it, and go out and fail because you're not gonna, you're not gonna grow without failing.

You know, failures are a part of life.

Failures aren't meant to be obstacles or walls.

They're meant to be steps towards success and yeah, sometimes you fall back off the staircase, but if you get back up and start climbing, eventually you're gonna reach the top.

- You mentioned volunteers earlier.

I'm sure there are people looking out and thinking, "Well, this is something I'd like to help with, but I'm not sure if I have the ability that you would need as a volunteer."

What type of people are you looking for?

- Man, we have volunteer opportunities out the womb.

I mean, there are so, so many volunteer opportunities.

If you go to our website nubability.org and click on volunteer, has a full list of them.

So many that I don't know them all off the top of my head.

- And you can get more information, as Sam said, from nubability.org.

Sam Kuhnert is the founder and executive director of NubAbility Athletics Foundation.

Thank you so much for coming in.

- Thank you, Jen.

- And you've been watching InFocus on WSIU.

You can find this episode and many others by going to wsiu.org or find us on our YouTube channel, where you can always click subscribe.

For everyone here at WSIU, I'm Jennifer Fuller, we'll catch you next time.

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